The suit was filed Thursday on behalf of about 2,000 teachers by Rafe Esquith, 61, one of the Los Angeles Unified School District's best-known and most popular teachers.

It comes on the heels of reports that the L.A. school board voted unanimously and behind closed doors to fire Esquith for misconduct. Earlier this year, Esquith was pulled from his classroom and placed under investigation.

Esquith's case has gained the support of actors Hal Holbrook and Sir Ian McKellan, longtime fans of the teacher's efforts to bring classic works by Mark Twain and William Shakespeare to low-income immigrant students.

Thursday's lawsuit "is the largest class action by teachers in the history of public education," said attorney Ben Meiselas, who represents Esquith, the lead plaintiff, along with attorney and CNN legal analyst Mark Geragos.

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Obituary: Actress Joan Leslie, 90, one of the last of the dwindling number of performers during the "golden age" of Hollywood during the thirties and forties, has died.

She was in 1942's Yankee Doodle Dandy with James Cagney.

Joan Leslie, an actress in films including Yankee Doodle Dandy, Sergeant York and High Sierra, has died at age 90.

The star died Monday in Los Angeles, her family confirmed in a Los Angeles Times obituary, which referred to her as Joan Leslie Caldwell.

Leslie worked alongside some of Hollywood's most legendary leading men. At age 15 she got her big break when she was cast as a crippled girl alongside Humphrey Bogart in High Sierra. The following year she played Gary Cooper's love interest in Sergeant York, and later rang in her 17th birthday on the set of Yankee Doodle Dandy while playing the wife of James Cagney's titular character.